Monthly Archives: October 2016

I borrowed another DVD from library, which is a collection of fairy tale films by Lotte Reiniger.

Actually, I personally never crazy about children reading or animations, I am more attracted by dark style philosophy stories. But I feel sometimes watch those beatiful narrative stories also benefit me. Particular in this collection, Lotte worked as a representer used shadow art and classic music.

Animation is always about telling story. Animators have their personal favorite method/media that makes them unique. Lotte Reindeer’s film for me, are very gentle and soft, slowly and objective tell audience what happening now, plus the which fill the visual blank while reading a traditional children’s book.

Charlotte “Lotte” Reiniger (2 June 1899 – 19 June 1981) was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. Reiniger made more than 40 films over her career, all using her invention.[1] Her best known films are The Adventures of Prince Achmed(1926) – the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, preceding Walt Disney’s feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937) by over ten years – and Papageno (1935), featuring music by Mozart. Reiniger is also noted for devising a predecessor to the first multi-plane camera.As a child, she was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, even building her own puppet theatre, so that she could put on shows for her family and friends.As a teenager, Reiniger fell in love with cinema, first with the films of Georges Méliès for their special effects, then the films of the actor and director Paul Wegener, known today for The Golem (1920). In 1915, she attended a lecture by Wegener that focused on the fantastic possibilities of animation.

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This DVD contains fourth short animations, I watched half of them, I mean some of them just couldn’t draw my attention so I skipped a few of them. And some of them I am not really get into it, overall, I would like write some words about these three pieces: Door (1990), Hill Farm(1988) and Second Class Mail (1984)

Second Class Mail 1984: This is the my favourite short animation recently watched. the drawing style was very sweet. The plots very similar to a story called Be Right Back in Black Mirror. The animation concerns more about the lonely olds. The skill were used in animation were smart as well.

Hill Farm 1988: I watched this animation once before, the animation is about 10mins long, story happened around the same place Hill Frame. Basically about relationships between animals/nature and human. Three different statues, framers, visitors/photographers and people have high social states.

Door 1990 : by David Anderson. It is an experimental animation, mixed traditional skill and modern technic. At the beginning there is a floating globe with doors, and then animator played the keys, paper cut character…

It’s a very funny short piece. Barely dialogue. Characters were very simple designed, but the movements gave them different personalities, which is very interesting. For example, when girls escaped from the monster, one of them came back wanted find their baskets, and stopped to watch fishes in pond while monster were chasing them….

The drawing style in this piece animation is very impressive, like how did director achieve fscene change. I couldn’t find too much information about the director Natasha Golovanova, neither more information about this animation BOY IS A BOY.

Based on the short description attached with DVD, the animator directing Disney-style animation based on Russian and western fairy and scripted by his husband.For this animation , she worked first time with female screenwriter.

The story contain a sharp contrast between two worlds—child’s fantasy word with their unbelievable imagination and adult’s world with formed logical. The animated drawings explained and even extend the story visually.

Movement also telling story because it gives character individual. That’s the thought came out after watching Winsor McCay’s short animations. Comparing with full-length animation/cartoon, most short animation film cannot build a long personal background about characters so those movements animators give to characters’ usually let audience discover characters’ individual directly and quickly.

I think How a Mosquito Operates (1912) is a really good example about storytelling come from movements.

Characters’ movement even more important than real actors in film, because everyone knows that characters are made by animators, they always come from some reasons. So wrong/ unclear movements will let them misunderstand.

Hello, My name is Yige, I come from China. I have been studying in London since 2013. I finished my degree this summer from Wimbledon College of Art. My BA course was Fine art, Print and Time based media. We could explore any field in contemporary art during the studies. I made some pieces of video work last two years.